


Above/Below

by HawthorneWhisperer



Series: Childhood Friends AU [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, pure fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 08:39:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4094323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HawthorneWhisperer/pseuds/HawthorneWhisperer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Clarke is five, Bellamy Blake moves in down the street.  For the next eighteen years, they drift in and out of each other's lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Above/Below

Clarke’s first memory of Bellamy was of him below her.  

“You’re the one they’re looking for, aren’t you?” he called up to where she was perched on a branch.  She recognized him from school–she was only in kindergarten but he was in fourth grade, an unqualified  _big kid_.  He had a little sister a year younger than her (practically a baby) and they lived with their mom and their grandmother in the house down the street.  They were new to the neighborhood, having pulled up to the house in a brown van full of boxes that rattled loudly whenever it drove down the street.

Clarke frowned at the intruder, upset that he’d discovered her hiding place.  She wasn’t going home, that was for sure.  She’d run away for a reason (it involved broccoli for dinner and not being able to color until she finished her broccoli–it was very complicated and no one seemed to understand, not even her dad who just ruffled her hair and told her to finish her dinner with a chuckle) and she wasn’t going home.  Ever.

Even though the sun was setting and it was getting dark.  Clarke wasn’t scared of the dark (much) and if she was going to make it on her own, she would just have to deal with it like a big kid.  Only babies would want Mr. BunBun to snuggle with, and she wasn’t a baby anymore.  “Come on, your parents are getting worried,” Bellamy called.  “You’ve made it two hours–they learned their lesson.  How about I walk you back?”

“Are they mad?” she asked finally.  She didn’t want to make them  _mad_ , she just needed them to _understand_  that broccoli was gross and she wouldn’t eat it anymore.  That’s all.

“No, they aren’t mad.  But they’re worried and they have half the neighborhood looking for you.”

Slowly, Clarke climbed back down and hitched her backpack up a little higher.  She’d brought the necessities (her coloring books, crayons, and five packs of peanut butter crackers) but on second thought, she didn’t really want to sleep in a tree without Mr. BunBun and her nightlight.  Bellamy walked next to her the three blocks back to her house as the streetlights popped on.  She’d never been allowed to stay out this late and she watched the bugs swarming the lights with mild curiosity.  They rounded the corner to her street and Clarke slowed down because  _everyone_  was outside, calling her name.  Clarke hated being in trouble, and she was pretty sure she was about to be in the most trouble she’d ever been in, even more than that time she accidentally made Wells cry.

Clarke’s mom saw them first and burst into tears.  She ran and scooped Clarke up into her arms, whispering “you’re safe, you’re safe,” over and over again.  Clarke expected a scolding, not hugs, but her dad came up to them next and wrapped them both in a bear hug.

“Where’d you find her?” he asked Bellamy, who was shuffling his feet awkwardly.

“She made it to the park, up in a tree,” he said and looked away from them, like he was embarrassed.  “O runs away a lot.  That’s usually what she does.”

Jake let go of them and shook Bellamy’s hand like a grown up.  “Thanks, bud.”

“No problem,” Bellamy muttered and darted across the street to where his mother was standing, alone.

That was another thing Clarke knew about Bellamy–he didn’t have a dad.  Wells didn’t have a mom and she was used to that, but until the Blakes moved in she didn’t realize some people didn’t have  _dads_.  It made her sad and want to share her dad with them, because who else would check your closet for monsters, even though you were a big girl who wasn’t really scared of them anymore?  (It was nice to know for sure, though).  Octavia didn’t have a dad either, and the other moms in their neighborhood sometimes whispered about how she had a  _different_  dad from Bellamy.  This was something bad, clearly, but Clarke didn’t see how it mattered if they had one or two dads, because they didn’t have a dad around at all.

After that Bellamy would sometimes smile and wave at her when the kindergarteners were on their way out for recess, which made her something of a rockstar in Mr. Nyko’s class because the only big kids anyone else knew were their older brothers or sisters.  And then the next year Clarke moved up to first grade and Bellamy moved up to fifth and Octavia started kindergarten, which meant Clarke had someone to wait with after school while Bellamy played football with his friends.  Octavia didn’t like to color (something Clarke found very confusing) but she loved hopscotch and four square so they played those games on days that Clarke’s mom was late picking her up.  “Why can’t we give them a ride home?” Clarke asked as she buckled herself into the backseat.

“Because their mom works until four and their grandma is too sick to watch them,” Abby explained.  

That was something else Clarke learned about the Blakes–they moved in with their grandma because she was sick, and not the sort of sick that ever gets better.  A nurse came to their house every morning when Aurora left for work and drove away in her small grey car when Aurora got home, because Bellamy and Octavia’s grandmother needed a special nurse.  Clarke knew all about nurses (at her mom’s hospital they all cooed over her like she was still a  _baby_ ) but this nurse didn’t work with her mom.  She worked for a special company that made sick people comfortable, but not better.

Bellamy’s grandma died later that year and Clarke went over to their house to play with Octavia while her mom talked to their mom in a low, soothing voice.  Clarke didn’t know anyone who died before, except for Wells’ mom but she didn’t count because she died when Clarke and Wells were just babies.  For once Octavia agreed to color with Clarke while Bellamy played on his gameboy, his heels banging against the chair legs as their mothers talked in the kitchen.  “Do you want to color?” she asked politely.

“No,” Bellamy snapped and stomped upstairs to his room.

Two weeks later, Bellamy walked past her lunch table and stole one of her peanut butter crackers.  He chewed it noisily with a big, fake smile on his face as Clarke sprang out of her seat.  “ _That’s stealing_ ,” she hissed, because stealing was  _bad_.

“Whatcha gonna do about it?” he taunted, and then the bell rang dismissing them all to recess and he darted away.

But Clarke couldn’t let an injustice go so she stomped across the grassy field to the fifth grader’s area and cornered him.  “You stole from me,” she repeated.

“And?”

“And that’s not fair,” she explained and crossed her arms.  “You should apologize.”

“Make me,” Bellamy spat.  Clarke didn’t like this Bellamy very much.  She liked the Bellamy that walked her home when she ran away and pushed her and Octavia on the swings, but that Bellamy had disappeared when his grandma died.

So Clarke did the only thing she could think of–she challenged him to a spelling bee.  Clarke was a good speller.  A  _really_  good speller.  The best in her class, even better than Wells, and Wells was  _smart_.  Bellamy glared at her, but a crowd had gathered around them so he gave in.  Kids shouted out words and Clarke kept up, even with the hard words like  _geology_  and  _immigrant._   There was a brief debate amongst the crowd if Bellamy had spelled invisible right (Anya insisted it was a-b-l-e not i-b-l-e, but she was voted down by the other fifth graders) and by the time the bell rang, it was still a tie.

Which really meant Clarke had won, because she was in  _first_  grade and he was in  _fifth_.  

Bellamy was mad at her, but a week later he walked her to the nurses’ office when she got stung by a bee at recess and squeezed her hand while she tried not to cry.

Then Clarke started second grade and Octavia started first, and Bellamy left and went to the middle school across town.  Octavia had her friends (a group of girls that were always giggling to each other) and Clarke had Wells, so sometimes Clarke and Octavia played together while they were waiting after school or when there was nothing else to do on long, boring weekends, but Bellamy was in a different world.  He left on his bike in the mornings to meet his friends, a bunch of older boys that  _swore_ sometimes and did things like dare each other to jump out of trees down in the park.  Sometimes he let Clarke and Octavia tag along, but his friends were noisy and rough and after awhile they stopped bugging him and stayed home instead.

By the time Clarke was in sixth grade, Bellamy was in high school and she almost never saw him.  His group of friends had expanded to include a bunch of girls–girls who wore makeup and didn’t even seem to notice Clarke and Octavia when they swarmed into the Blakes’ house to watch movies that Clarke and Octavia weren’t allowed to watch.  Clarke resented that (she wasn’t a baby, she was eleven years old and spent two weeks every summer at sleep-away camp) but Octavia proclaimed her brother’s friends to be annoying and slowly, Bellamy went from the boy down the street to a complete mystery.  He got his driver’s license and a girlfriend and sometimes he’d wave to Clarke as he drove his mom’s van down their street (not the brown one they’d moved in with, not that this one was much nicer) but that was it.

There was a big party for him the summer after he graduated from high school and Clarke went with her parents, feeling awkward and out of place.  She still hung out with Octavia sometimes, but O’s friends liked to go to the mall and talk about boys.  She would have let Clarke come, but Clarke felt uncomfortable around those girls.  (For one thing, she sort of wanted to talk about girls too and she was worried they’d think she was a freak.  For another, hanging out with Octavia’s friends would have meant leaving Wells behind and she could never do that.)  She had barely talked to Bellamy in the past few years aside from a few brief hellos when she was at their house, but he smiled broadly and gave her a hug that made her ears burn.  He hugged her parents too, and his olive skin went a shade darker when Jake told him that he was proud of the man Bellamy had become.

Octavia cried the morning Bellamy left for college, and Clarke hugged her and promised not to tell anyone about her tears.  Clarke was scared too, because middle school was one thing but high school was another.  But she kept that to herself and reassured herself that she had four classes with Wells so really, it would be fine.

And it was.  Clarke joined the swim team (she was actually really good, which surprised her because most of her swimming experience was splashing around in the lake at camp) and Wells joined the football team and her teachers liked her, so everything was fine.  She told Wells that she liked girls too and he hugged her and told her he loved her, but she didn’t tell anyone else (not yet).  Bellamy only came home at breaks, worldly and experienced in a way Clarke wasn’t sure she’d ever be. He talked to her a little more, but she wasn’t over very often–Octavia had her friends from the volleyball team and she and Clarke didn’t have a whole lot in common anymore.  Sometimes Octavia would come over and watch a movie in Clarke’s basement, but that was it.

But junior year, everything changed.  That spring Aurora started feeling weak but waved off Abby’s suggestions of a doctor’s visit until the end of April, insisting that she was just tired from work.  Clarke always wondered if Aurora already knew it was too late, because by the time she did go see the doctor she seemed to have accepted it.  She refused to let anyone tell Bellamy until his exams were over two weeks later; two weeks where Octavia cried stormily in Clarke’s arms every night.

By July, Aurora was gone.  Clarke went to the wake and the funeral and the burial and choked back her tears each time until she was safely in her parents’ car because she didn’t want Bellamy and Octavia to feel like they had to make her feel better.  She’d liked Aurora, who never made her call her Mrs. Blake like her other friend’s parents.  She was quiet (like Bellamy was when he was thinking) and she taught Clarke how to sew when Clarke’s ideas for Halloween costumes got too elaborate for her mom and dad.  Even if she worked all the time ( _poor woman, I don’t see how she can afford the mortgage on a house that big all by herself,_  one of the other neighbors once clucked) she was there when her kids needed her.  Except for now, when they needed her the most.

Abby and Jake’s friends tsk-tsked about Bellamy’s decision to leave college ( _just one year shy of graduation, and he was always such a smart boy_ ) and move home.  He got two jobs (one at the library and one at a bar) and insisted that Octavia keep the money she earned from her job at Claire’s for her own college fund.  Clarke tried to help where she could and bought Octavia’s ticket whenever they went to the movies together, but she knew Bellamy would be furious if he ever found out.

He was like a different person that fall–he was still Bellamy, but he was so different from the boy she remembered.  He snapped at her whenever she stopped by and it seemed like he was always hunched over the kitchen table, staring at bills and digging his palms into his eyes.  

“Wells is being weird,” she told Octavia.  Octavia had her first test in Mr. Kane’s AP Bio class the next day, and Clarke was one of the few students who’d breezed through it the year before.  

Octavia furrowed her brow and looked at Clarke’s notecards.  “How so?  And what the fuck is a polymerase chain reaction?”

“I don’t know how to explain it–he’s just being super weird around me lately,” Clarke responded.  “And I can’t tell you the answer.  That’s the point of flashcards.”  Bellamy made a disgusted noise from where he was rummaging around in their fridge.  Clarke threw a confused glance at him and continued.  “He just–he wouldn’t go to the football game with me last week, and then I asked if he wanted to hang out this weekend and he got all weird about it.”

Bellamy made the noise again and closed the fridge.  “He’s in love with you, princess.  Has been for years,” he sneered.  “I’m working at the bar until close.  No parties, O,” he barked and stormed out of the house.

Clarke stared at the side door like it would give her the answers to all the questions Bellamy had just raised.  “Ignore him.  He’s just being a dick,” Octavia soothed.  “But really, what the fuck is a polymerase chain reaction?”

Three months later, everything changed again.  Clarke and Abby were watching some mindless crime procedural when lights flashed through their living room, red and blue.  They knew what happened before they opened the door and for months after, Clarke sometimes wondered if Jake would still be alive if they had just ignored the knock.

Bellamy and Octavia came to his funeral and the burial, a grim, grey day very different from the hot summer morning they buried their mother.  Wells was by her side through it all but as they walked away from the cemetery it was Bellamy’s arms she burrowed into, because he knew.

He knew what it was like to have a part of you missing.

Octavia knew it too, but Wells couldn’t–he never knew his mother, but  _never knowing_  and  _knowing and then losing_  someone were such different things.  The three of them were part of a club that no one ever wanted to join and Clarke found herself spending more time at their house, because at least neither of them threw her pitying looks all the time.  She quit all her activities against her mother’s wishes because she couldn’t bear to continue on like her life was the same.  

It wasn’t, and it never would be.  Abby threw herself into her work and Clarke withdrew more and more, and that was how they coped.  Clarke had been accepted Early Decision to her first choice school, and one email later to the admissions counselor at Arcadia University about her father’s death and she was off the hook until college started the next September.  Her grades plummeted and Wells tried in vain to coax her out of her shell but she steadfastly refused.

Bellamy even gave her her first beer one rare Saturday night he didn’t have to work at the bar.  Octavia was out with her friends and he made Clarke swear she’d never tell O before he popped the top off and handed the brown bottle over.  “It doesn’t really help,” he admitted and then took one for himself anyway.  Clarke had three that night and then stumbled home, numb and sad, to her dark blue bedroom.  She’d painted it with Jake three years ago and now she hated and treasured it in equal measure, and she flung herself across the bed without even bothering to change.  She wasn’t sure, but she was pretty sure she dreamed about dark, sad eyes that night.

Clarke left for college the next fall with little fanfare.  Wells was going with her, so all she had to do was run over to the Blakes and hug them both goodbye the morning she left.  Bellamy looked a little bleary but shrugged it off with a short “had to work until close last night.”  Their hug was brief (too brief, but Clarke couldn’t exactly figure out why) and then her hug with Octavia was long and full of tears.

College was better than she thought it would be–maybe it was the distance or the new setting (or the break from her mother, with whom she’d started fighting more and more in the past year)–but she settled into a new routine and finally felt like she was moving forward instead of being stuck in a morass of grief.  She barely saw Bellamy at all during her breaks, between his work schedule and his new girlfriend.  ( _She’s fine_ , Octavia confided.   _I mean, she’s…she’s whatever.  She’s nice enough and he’s smiling for once, so she’s fine_.)  Mostly she saw him in passing as he left for work or a date, and he was friendly but each interaction left Clarke with an odd pit in her stomach.

It was at Octavia’s graduation party that she realized Bellamy was handsome.  She’d always known he was handsome, in the way she knew Octavia was beautiful and Wells looked like he belonged in a J Crew ad, but knowing it and  _knowing_  it were two different things.  He hugged her tightly and she noticed that his shoulders and chest were pleasantly broad and hard, and his dark curls were just messy enough that she wanted to straighten them herself.  “Thanks for coming,” he said as he let go.  “I know you have that research thing this summer.”

Clarke hoped it was dark enough that he didn’t see her blush.  “Wouldn’t miss it.  Besides, the research project doesn’t start until next week and Mom would have killed me if I didn’t come home at all.”  

“You two getting along better?”

“Yeah.  I think the distance helped,” Clarke admitted. “Are you going to move now that O’s done with school?” That had been her secret fear–that the second Octavia graduated Bellamy would sell their grandmother’s house and move away.  She didn’t like the thought of her neighborhood without the Blakes.  It seemed wrong, like a puzzle piece would be missing.

Bellamy shook his head.  “No, I want to get O through college first.  Then we’ll see.”  Octavia tackled her in a hug just then and dragged her off, and Clarke only caught glimpses of Bellamy after that.  She went back to campus for her summer research project and in the fall Octavia left for college (a big party school across the state) and life went on.  Clarke started dating (first Finn, which was a disaster, and then Lexa, which was a disaster in an entirely different way) and she saw Octavia and Bellamy over Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks; quick visits usually dominated by Octavia’s latest roommate horror story.  Once they were both legal Bellamy let them come visit him at the bar, and the smile on his face as he handed Clarke a beer let her know he was remembering that night years before.  She’d been so sad then (sad and angry, just like him) but Bellamy had been an oasis for her.  She raised her beer in a silent cheers and his smile grew wider and suddenly, she had to look away.

Clarke only came home for a few days at a time, even in the summer.  She applied to med school at Arcadia and got in, and over Christmas Clarke’s senior year Octavia revealed both her desire to become a cop  _and_  the fact that was secretly dating a graduate student.  Clarke was sworn to secrecy on both counts for nearly a year and according to Abby, the Blake siblings’ fight when Octavia finally told Bellamy could be heard down the block.

After her first year of med school, Clarke came home over the Fourth of July and the white  _for sale_  sign sitting in front of the Blakes’ house was like a punch to the gut.  The small red  _sold_  sitting on top of the sign was even worse.  Abby followed Clarke’s gaze as they stood in their driveway.  “I wanted to tell you in person–he just put it on the market last week.  I don’t think he thought it would sell that fast.”  Clarke nodded vaguely and grabbed her laundry from the backseat.  (She was perfectly capable of doing it on her own, but her building’s machines were just as likely to get bleach stains on her jeans and melt holes in her blouses as they were to actually clean them).  She barely made it inside the front door before she made up her mind.  “Go,” Abby said with a quiet smile.  “We can have breakfast together tomorrow.  I’ve got the whole weekend off–go,” she repeated and shooed Clarke out of the house.

Clarke sprinted through the quickly gathering dusk and pounded on the Blakes’ front door.  The only light was in the library and she watched Bellamy’s shadow stand up and cross towards the door.  “You’re moving?” she blurted out the second the door swung open.

“Well hello to you too, princess.  Good to see you after so long–won’t you come in?” Bellamy replied sarcastically and stepped aside.

“You’re moving?” she said again, slightly out of breath.

“Well, O’s in the police academy now and then she’s moving in with her  _boyfriend_ , so it really didn’t make much sense for me to stay.  I can finish my last year at Arcadia with my half of the money we made off this house, and O can use her half to pay off her loans.”

Clarke looked around the familiar living room and realized he was already halfway into the process of packing.  There were so many things she wanted to say– _it will be weird with you gone, who will I talk to when I come home if you and Octavia aren’t here, please don’t leave_ –but instead she just offered to help pack.  Bellamy pointed her to the library and followed her in moments later with two beers.   “Don’t tell O,” he said as he handed one to her with a wink.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Clarke smiled back and knelt beside an empty box.

And then one minute she was taping the box shut and the next minute Bellamy was kissing her, soft and needy all at once.  “Sorry,” he gasped, pulling back slightly.  “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”  He was kneeling next to her, surrounded by the clutter of boxes and tape, and he’d never looked more handsome.

“Don’t apologize,” Clarke ordered and took his face in her hands.  She skimmed her thumbs across his cheekbones and kissed him again, wondering why it took them so long to figure this out.  She pushed him back and twisted so she was hovering above him, his smile gentle and hopeful.

(Her first memory of Bellamy was of him below her.)


End file.
